I am a mom raising a 13yo son who has Bi Polar, ADHD and possibly OCD. This is our life…the good, the bad, the ugly as we go through it!

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On nights like tonight, when everything feels strained and I just want to cry, I need to be reminded of all the good things I have. It has just been a tough one…I came home not feeling good and just wanting to rest, so I slept on the couch for awhile, which I shouldn’t do because my son takes total advantage of that. B forgot to take his afternoon med, but we didn’t realize it until it was too late for him to take it, so he was WAY off. Getting him to do his HW was hell, he was rude and disrespectful to both S and I, and we are at the moment ending his evening listening to him yell from up in his bedroom that everything is retarded and life is gay and he hates his life…all because I made him take a shower (which he has to do every night) and pick up all the crap he had spread throughout the living room. So hard to deal with sometimes and just raises such tension in the house between everyone, even the dogs feels it. I sit and look at my wonderful fiance’ S and think “what the hell is wrong with him? Why would anyone want to take on the stress and strain the my son brings into the lives he is involved in?” Then I remember all the words he has said to me, how he loves both Band I, that he is here for the long haul, that B is a great boy and he wants to help him and I remember why I fell in love with him in the first place, because he is a kind, loving soul who is meant to be here with me and my son. I love him so much it warms my heart and soul.

*Sigh* it is quiet upstairs now and I have to wonder if B is calming down or hurting himself, and hoping for the former. I continue to be exhausted and not feeling well, but it can always be worse.As my mom says, one day at a time and just breathe…

then tonight I am far from virtuous. Have you ever watched a rodent in those wheels, where they just keep running and running, but never get anywhere? That is how I feel some days (like tonight) when trying to help my son. I am the one running and running and getting no where, while he watches and doesn’t care. He has an excuse because it is the worlds’ fault, never his. So I a run like that rodent because his tutor is coming to take him and work with him tonight. I am getting together the papers he needs to write the essay for English (the class he failed first quarter and is still failing and the essay that is already two week late) while he goes into a full blown rage, slamming the table, throwing himself to the floor, yelling at me that he isn’t going to do it and it is stupid and I am stupid and slams his fists against the floor…all while my fiance is doing all he can to stay cool and not lose it with my son and my fiances’ parents sit quietly in the living room because sadly they have witnessed this before. Welcome to a typical Tuesday night at my house. Then of course he forgot to bring home the chocolate that we sold for his choral trip in May, so that means I have to run and get that at his school before making it the public library on time because I myself and tutoring because we need the extra money.

So, I send him to his room, screaming and punching all the while, get my fiance settled with what papers need to with my son and the tutor, say good bye to everyone and out running I go. As I go, I can only hope that he pulls himself together and goes easily with his tutor and that I don’t get a phone call while I am working that I have to run home due to his defiance. I am the rodent again. As I get home, it will be to wait to see who comes back from tutoring, Jekyll or Hyde and that will depend how the rest of the night goes. It could go either way, we constantly live on egg shells, hence the Jekyll and Hyde, which I nick named him years ago, but we will save that story for another blog, perhaps later tonight if I am up monitoring a raging child, but let’s hope not. Maybe tomorrow I wont be the rodent. One can hope, right?

I was given this poem when my son was around grade 2 and diagnosed with ADHD (if that was all we had to contend with, how much easier things would be). I read and re read it many times up to this very day, laughing and crying as I do.

Welcome to Holland by Emily Pearl Kingsely ” I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability- to try to help people who have not shared the unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s like this…

When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip- to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum, The Michelangelo’ David, The Gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says “Welcome to Holland”. Holland? You say. What do you mean Holland? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.

But there has been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.

So you must go out and buy new guidebooks. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. It’s just a different place. It’s slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for awhile and you catch your breath, you look around, and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills, Holland has tulips, Holland even has Rembrandt.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say, “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned”.

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, go away, because the loss of a dream is a very significant loss.

But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.”